CBS Evening News

Harold Camping doomsday prediction record: 0-2

In the waning hours of May 21st, there was no sign yet that a much-ballyhooed end-times prophecy is coming true.

CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy, on the doomsday watch, reports that there have been, and probably always will be, many predictions about when the world will end.

Hollywood has been obsessed with the end of days for decades. Mankind has struggled with the implications for centuries. Some claim to have seen the signs. Others worry they don't even have the time to think about it.

You may have seen one of the 1,200 billboards that are the work of one man: 89-year-old Christian preacher Harold Camping, owner of the Family Radio Network.

"You and I are living at the time of the end of the world," Camping said recently.

His followers have spread the word of the world's end all across the globe, using donations to pay for it.

"There's going to be a big earthquake that will make the one in Japan seem like a Sunday school picnic," Camping said.

He says it will first strike Fiji and New Zealand, then work its way around the world. But it appears to be late. By Camping's own estimates, it should have hit there already, and it certainly has not.

Camping arrived at Saturday's date using a complicated mathematical formula based on biblical numbers, but he still has gathered a host of doubters.

"It doesn't say anything about the Bible. It says a lot about their imagination," said Rev. Michael Seiler with St. Matthew's Episcopal Church. "I just think it's a bunch of - baloney."

The Mayan calendar famously calls for the end next year. The Bible itself is pretty clear on this: Matthew 24:36 says, "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

As for Harold Camping, he previously said the world would end in 1994. It appears he is now 0 for 2.